


The Death of the World

by jettiebettie



Category: Death Note, Death Note (Anime & Manga), Death Note: Another Note
Genre: Character Study, Gen, Pre-Series
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-04
Updated: 2018-01-04
Packaged: 2019-02-28 10:27:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,772
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13269504
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jettiebettie/pseuds/jettiebettie
Summary: Quillsh Wammy is a kind looking man with an accented, soft spoken voice and fatherly touch, and it is probably because of these things that the irony of it all is so subtle.The Boy is found in a foster home, by no means his first, just outside of Los Angeles. Countless cited behavior problems aside, the old man smiles warmly at the him and proceeds to ask him odd but interesting questions. The Boy isn't sure he answers them the way the man wants; his statements tend to make people unhappy, and when people are unhappy they get mean. But the man – yes, Quillsh Wammy the Boy confirms – doesn't seem unhappy, doesn't get upset. Instead, he offers the Boy a home, somewhere far away, not even in the United States.“Can I call you Father?” the Boy asks.“Mr. Wammy will be fine,” he is told. It is the first gentle cruelty of his new life.





	The Death of the World

“ _The eyes of a shinigami. […] Normally contact with a shinigami was a prerequisite for acquisition, but Beyong Birthday had traded nothing – he had seen the world through those eyes since before he could remember.”_

-

Quillsh Wammy is a kind looking man with an accented, soft spoken voice and fatherly touch, and it is probably because of these things that the irony of it all is so subtle.

The Boy is found in a foster home, by no means his first, just outside of Los Angeles. Countless cited behavior problems aside, the old man smiles warmly at the him and proceeds to ask him odd but interesting questions. The Boy isn't sure he answers them the way the man wants; his statements tend to make people unhappy, and when people are unhappy they get mean. But the man – yes, _Quillsh Wammy_ the Boy confirms – doesn't seem unhappy, doesn't get upset. Instead, he offers the Boy a home, somewhere far away, not even in the United States.

“Can I call you Father?” the Boy asks.

“Mr. Wammy will be fine,” he is told. It is the first gentle cruelty of his new life.

-

In Winchester he learns why he is there, not to be a son, but to be something special. There are classes with tutors ( _Mib Tisdale_ , _Gane R Seede_ ), assignments unlike any he's ever had before, constant testing and assessing. He doesn't mind it; the teachers and Mr. Wammy tolerate him, encouraging certain behaviors while quietly attempting to dissuade others. He lets them think it's working because they're all nice enough and it would be a shame for them to turn mean. Still, it's not as though he can simply stop being himself, and sometimes the self he is is not the self his teachers want.

“I've been reviewing your progress,” Mr. Wammy tells him one day, handing the Boy a cup of tea from across the table. He accepts it but doesn't drink. Mr. Wammy isn't offended. “You've been doing quite well, though Mrs. Tisdale tells me you have an interesting way of looking at things.”

“She says I'm not efficient,” the Boy says. “But I get the right answer every time. Is efficiency that important?”

“Are you familiar with the principle of Occam's Razor?” Mr. Wammy asks.

“Often times the simplest answer is the best and most accurate.”

“Correct. Is there any particular reason that you would rather engage in more non-linear thought processes?”

“Because... it's fun?”

“It's good to enjoy your studies,” Mr. Wammy concedes, “but often your evaluation of a situation will be time sensitive. In those cases, the traditional methods are perhaps more prudent.” His words were prefatory in tone, the Boy notes, meaning a prompt change in his behavior would probably be expected. How perplexing. Well, he can pretend for a while, at least long enough to put Mr. Wammy's concerns at ease. But how silly of him! To think that someone can change the way their brain works with just a simple request.

-

The other child here is not so good at pretending, but also doesn't necessarily need to. The name the Boy sees is _Antigone Thrash_ , but he's not supposed to know that, no no, so he tries his best not to say it. He is permitted to know Albany though, and Albany is far quieter than him, far less outwardly inquisitive, but just as exceptional with outstanding marks in mathematics and physics, whereas the Boy excels in literature, history, and abstract thinking. They're rarely allowed to interact with one another, giving the Boy the impression of being in some sort of testing group, control versus variable. But who is the control and who is the variable? Once upon a time, the Boy thought for certain that Albany, with such dedication to numbers and the sciences, was Mr. Wammy's tried and true control – his _traditional method_ – and that he was the variable, something new and untested, something undeniably unique.

And then he learns. He learns that they are both variables and that the true control is L.

L.

Albany's world beings unraveling when L's existence is made known to them.

-

“You're going to be as white headed as Mr. Wammy if you keep this up,” he says, walking towards the back of the estate's library. Albany gives him an agitated glare.

“You should be studying too. Evaluations are next week. I hear they're quite extensive.”

“Oh? I'm surprised you hear anything with as deep as you've buried yourself in these books.” He sits on the corner of the table, intentionally covering an important reference. Albany angrily shoves at him but he barely moves.

“Are you here to sabotage me? That's low, even for you, B.”

Ah, yes. That's who they are now.

“A and B... Is that supposed to mean you're the Alpha subject and I'm the Beta subject?” B ponders it for a moment. “I don't think I like that,” he admits.

“Then maybe start taking all of this seriously for once!” A suddenly yells. The sound of it echos off of the walls, loud enough that B might have even jumped if these outbursts hadn't become a regularity. B restrains himself, saying nothing back, but he can't resist an admittedly inappropriate smile. A looks at him as if he's lost his mind, but redirects that heated stare to the books and... does nothing. Knuckles white, jaw clenched, just staring. B cocks his head.

It's been a couple of years since the day they were seated in front of a computer and shown the mold by which they were meant to be formed. In that screen, B saw a burning bush, a benefactor of purpose he'd long been seeking. In that screen, A saw something far worse. A forever growing peak, perhaps. The overwhelming precipice proceeding a devastating fall. In it, B believes, A saw inevitable failure.

The Greeks might label this a tragedy.

“I do take it seriously,” B finally says. “Why, just the other day Mr. Seede commended me on my thesis-”

“Mr. Seede says you're broken,” A interrupts, the words childishly malicious in tone. “He says if you don't stop trying to do things backwards, he's going to tell Mr. Wammy.”

“Backwards. You lot are the ones who do things backwards. I do things _forwards_ ,” B explains.

“What are you talking about?”

“Typically an investigation begins at the scene of a crime and ends once investigators have worked their way through the evidence to the culprit. Why start at the end? You should start at the beginning if you want your answers quickly. Mr. Wammy likes quick. He likes efficiency. L probably understand this.”

“That... makes no sense,” A tells him. “Even L has to have resulting evidence to work a case.”

“If that's true, how can he be the greatest detective to ever live just by doing normal police work? That is what would make no sense. My methods may be unorthodox, but have I ever been wrong?”

He hadn't. But A had.

“You should relax,” B says after a moment. “I have an excellent selection of Japanese literature-”

“You have a manga collection...”

“And you need a little culture in your life.” B hops off the table and turns to leave, sparing a moment to say under his breath, “As if I'd loan you my manga.”

-

A is not long for this world, unfortunately. B has grown accustom to their back-and-forths, and there is something oddly calming about watching a storm rage outside of yourself; most days it feels like B is inhabiting a tranquil center while A is rushing and being pulled in a number of furious directions. B is expecting perhaps Cardiac Arrest or Exhaustion to be the culprit, but as the Time winds down, he understands.

Well, no, not truly.

He doesn't understand why A gets so sick after just looking at pictures all day, gruesome though they may be; in the end, they're only photographs. The men describing their vicious attacks in confession videos have already been executed, and there's nothing frightening about the dead. The hours of medical studies detailing all the various ways a human body can be taken apart are educational and informative, nothing to lose sleep over.

But A does lose sleep. And losing sleep means that observations are missed, that connections are made more slowly, and that deductions are sometimes wrong. And at Wammy House, it would seem, being wrong carries a weight B is unfamiliar with.

Perhaps this lack of understanding is why, on the day the clock is to reach Zero, he slowly makes his way up the mansion stairs, back to the living quarters where he and A have rooms. Could seeing lead to a form of comprehension? Empirical evidence. Observational learning. It's a theory worth testing, at any rate. All of Mr. Wammy's tutors are finishing their morning meal, and the halls are quiet, save for B's light footfalls. He has time for uninterrupted study.

A's door is closed, thought it's rarely ever not due to some obsession with privacy and self-confinement. B bends at the waist to peer through the keyhole of the old door, but sees no movement. Nor is there sound except for the grandfather clock behind him; the longer he stays in that position, the louder it seems to get. He doesn't bother knocking, instead reaching out for the doorknob and giving it an experimental turn. It yields as B expected it to. He says nothing as he pushes the door open inch by slow, revealing inch. The main room is still and empty, but the overturned chair in front of the side closet is a neon sign in a space so orderly. B walks towards it, knowing better than to disturb evidence, but wishing to set it upright all the same. He stares at it a moment before finally turning to A.

“Is the mountain truly that high?” he asks the slightly swaying corpse. Only the rod the rope is tied to answers him in a small, high-pitched creek.

-

An odd mood falls over the estate after that. There's a sadness from the tutors and Mr. Wammy, yes, but more than that B can discern something else, something he can only equate to disappointment. It would make sense; he and A were investments, years worth of time and thousands of pounds have been paid toward their development. And, truthfully speaking, the tutors had always preferred to deal with A rather than B. He doesn't take offense to this, never has. A was normal. A was traditional. A was their preferred method. _A_ is the only thing engraved on the headstone. Antigone Thrash was pared down to Albany and then whittled away into a single letter. Now nothing remained.

They're all out on the grounds on a cold and blustery morning in the beginnings of winter, and it seems no one dares speak as the pallbearers from the funeral home ( _Richon Bale_ , _Durby W Colese_ , _Dason Morton_ ) lower the coffin into the ground. B, forever unused to such cold weather, tries to stay bundled up where he is lined with others around the grave. However Mrs. Tisdale, as short and as skinny as she is, is an awful wind break, so B does his best to inconspicuously move away closer to the trees around the mansion. He's blowing warm air into his hands when he feels the breath catch in his throat.

One of the pallbearers, a tall, thin young man who had been previously blocked from sight, walks away from the grave once the coffin is in the ground. He is dressed in a long charcoal grey coat, a black scarf protecting his lower face from the wind and a wool ivy cap over his slicked back hair. B almost doesn't believe what he's seeing. Surely what he is looking at is a fleeting aspect of winter, an indifferent stranger he'll never see or think of again after today. But his eyes have never lied to him before, he no reason to doubt them now.

_L Lawliet_

The young man stands next to Mr. Wammy, looking bored or irritated, it's hard to tell which. Mr. Wammy does not acknowledge him, merely remains politely stoic as a priest begins reading a passage from the Bible. B quickly tunes the priest out when the pallbearer becomes visibly annoyed with being ignored and leans just slightly toward the elderly man speaking in a low, muffled voice.

“I told you all of this was a waste of time.”

B forgets how to breathe entirely.

“You will do me the courtesy,” Mr. Wammy calmly and quietly admonishes, “of sparing me your willful irreverence in this moment.” The young man straightens back up, huffing and turning his head away, but saying nothing else as requested. The moment is clearly too personal to just be between funeral worker and grieving care giver. It's too familiar.

It's too much like father and son.

-

His revelation leaves him unsure of how to feel, and he decides it may be easier to feel as A might have.

A's clothes don't really fit him well. B is much taller, so the pants leave inches of his ankles exposed and the sleeves of the button down shirt don't sit quite right. Never the less, said sleeves rolled up and sitting behind a desk, with the right wig and proper amount of makeup applied, he thinks he's managed a faithful recreation. A perpetual frown, tense shoulders, the tremor in the right hand, the barely controlled nervous bouncing of the knee... B first and foremost considers what an uncomfortable life A must have lived.

In that dark and orderly room, yet to be cleared out, B takes a moment to contemplate, dragging his fingertips down the surface of the desk. How does it feel to think the way people want you to? To walk that linear path and neatly mark your paces step by step? It feels claustrophobic. How does it feel to look at L, to look up at that impossibly tall mountain? Dizzying. Perhaps even daunting. How does it feel to know that you will never reach the goal you've been working toward for so many years?

B's fingertips pause in their slow tracing and he blinks. How did that feel?

 _L Lawliet._ He sees the name clearly in his memory. He sees the name and he sees the lifespan. A long lifespan, the clock ticking down decades, not the sparse handful of years A had. Slowly, understanding settles into B's brain. Their goal was never to become as good as L. Their goal was always to become L. No. The goal is to _replace_ L. It's a fact he and A knew from the moment that distorted voice introduced itself. The life of an internationally active super detective is a dangerous one. At any moment, L's life might be threatened. At any moment, L's life might be taken. In such an event, someone must step up to take his place. That is their function.

But L's life isn't in danger. L's life won't end. Not for a very, very long time. The remaining Backup will be left waiting in the shadowed wings of Wammy House until such a point that he will no longer matter, unable to perform the function he was meant to fulfill, a useless spare kept in a cupboard _just in case_ and then never thought of again.

“ _I told you all of this was a waste of time.”_

Suddenly the twitching in his hand doesn't feel like imitation, the spasm of his knee more real. How does it feel to know you will never become that which you were meant to be? Born to be. Destined to be.

It feels like being reduced to ash.

-

Others are brought in. Many, many others, all much younger than he is and equally alone in the world, exceptional in some way, as well as a new caretaker ( _Roger Ruvie_ ), who seems perpetually displeased but is apparently an old friend of Mr. Wammy's. It makes sense from Mr. Wammy's point of view. If the odds of losing a variable are brought to 1 in 2, you increase the pool. 1 in 2 is devastating. 1 in 50 is acceptable. It's simple logic, really.

 _Simple_ has never set B's teeth on edge quite as much as it does right now.

He watches them all undergo a tour of the manor from a distance. Many of the children are quiet and withdrawn, some are openly curious, and a smaller number even seem bored. One of the bored looking ones sees him lingering in a doorway and casts him a suspicious glare. B does the normal thing and smiles, but something about it must off, because the child ( _Mihael Keehl_ ) actually recoils and runs to catch up with the group which had moved ahead. B lazily follows them up the grand staircase.

On the landing of the second floor, the child cautiously looks back and startles when he sees that B has followed.

“Who the fuck are you? One of the teachers?” Mihael asks. B raises an eyebrow.

“Careful. Mr Seede dislikes vulgarity.” B tips his head in thought. “On the other hand, it might be funny to watch a five-year-old swear at him.”

“I'm eight, asshole!” the child shouts. It catches the attention of Mrs. Tisdale at the front of the group.

“Mello! Language!” she chastises as she pushes through the crowd of children to stand in front of them. She looks down at the child ( _Mihael_ , now _Mello_ , one day _M_ , one day _Nothing_ ) disapprovingly before quickly turning that look onto B. He's by no means unfamiliar with it and so he simply looks back at her. “B,” Mrs. Tisdale says tiredly, “shouldn't you be examining case files.”

“The case has already been solved. They've all already been solved,” B says, letting his boredom color his tone. She tuts at him.

“You're meant to learn from them, young man.”

“Wouldn't it be more interesting and educational to _make_ a case worth solving?” he says lightly, despite the weight of hours of thought sitting behind his teeth. Mrs. Tisdale gives him an exasperated look, the one that says she's not willing to suffer through whatever quixotic mood he's in. Before she can reprimand him, B leans down towards Mello suddenly, causing the child to step back. “Have they told you about L yet?” he asks.

“B!”

“L?” the child echos, confused.

“What do you picture when you think of the world's greatest detective?” B asks, without segue.

"What the fuck are you talking about?” Mello asks irritably. Mrs. Tisdale tuts again and B ignores her.

“Are they wearing a suit? Do they have neat hair and neat shoes? Maybe they speak like all the other Englishmen in Winchester. Maybe they walk and breathe and look like anyone else in world,” B says without pause. “Because that doesn't sound like the world's greatest detective to me. That sounds like a nobody. The world's greatest detective should have more presence than that. The world's greatest detective should be more interesting than that. Don't you think?”

“I think you're probably some kind of idiot,” Mello pouts, perhaps unconsciously moving closer to Mrs. Tisdale. B barks out an amused laugh, only one, and it's perhaps a bit too loud, because both the child and the woman jump slightly. Mrs. Tisdale puts her hands on Mello's shoulders and tries to turn him back toward the group.

“B, I think it's time you return to your own studies,” she says, letting go of Mello and clapping her hands loudly. “Stay together!” she tells the children, moving back toward the front of the crowd. “It's a large house and it's easy to get lost.” The group begins to file down one of the hallways. Mello moves to follow but stops and turns back to B, glaring daggers straight into him.

“Who is L?” he asks.

“Someone we're meant to replace,” B answers honestly.

“Do you hate him or something? Sounds like you hate somebody,” Mello says in such a matter-of-fact tone that B blinks. Hate? He hates someone? His mouth is suddenly dry and all he can taste is smoke. Yes. He hates that insurmountable mountain and its unreachable peak. He hates that A is gone, that he is now part of the chaotic storm, ripped from his still center and detached calm. He hates this indescribable feeling of suddenly losing all purpose.

He hates L.

“I wonder,” he says, mostly to himself, “what the death of someone like him would look like.”

“You wanna see him die?” Mello asks, looking up at B as if he were crazy and breaking him from his thoughts. He smiles down at the child.

“I wouldn't mind seeing the death of the world,” he says pleasantly before turning on his heel and heading back down the stairs.

-

He was originally just a Boy, plucked up and remolded into a Backup, eventually left with the minimalist label of B. L Lawliet had a birth name. L Lawliet most likely had a birthday on record. L Lawliet would, one day far in the future, have a death day on record. L Lawliet would have everything on his headstone. B would have Nothing.

How unfair. How remorselessly rude. Who needed a name? Who needed a birthday? B certainly didn't. He'd lived his whole life without them, had never once thought them necessary. In truth, he was surely beyond such things and-

Yes. Yes, he was Beyond such things. He was Beyond needing a birth name. He was Beyond needing a birthday.

 

 

He was Beyond Birthday.

And sometimes, Beyond decides to himself one night in Mr. Seede's darkened classroom, sometimes one must walk their own path. Tear down all idols and use the broken stone to instead build an effigy. If he is never to become the world's greatest detective, then he would become that which the world's greatest detective fears. A shadow forever just out of the corner of L's eye, a threat forever just under the radar. Always there. Never seen. A nightmare that will follow L until his dying day. Beyond knows the outline of the plot, sitting in his brain, ready for greater detail. All he needs now is the setting. He gives himself over to a moment of whimsy, letting fate choose for him as he closes his eyes and throws a dart at Mr. Seede's impressively large map of the world. He takes a deep breath and hums when he releases it, opening his eyes and smiling.

Los Angeles. How perfect.

 

**Author's Note:**

> There is plenty that I wanted to do with this character study, which is to say I had hoped it would be a much longer piece. But it has been sitting in my WIP folder for such a very, very long time that I'll settle for finished.
> 
> A few things:  
> 1\. Coming up with nonsense English names typical of the DN style is honestly a great way to spend twenty minutes.
> 
> 2\. Most people have their own headcanons about A, and I don't particularly have any strong feelings of my own, so I approached A with a completely gender neutral tone as to accommodate the reader.
> 
> 3\. I changed the explanation of how B came to use Beyond Birthday than what is presented in the book. Also Mello doesn't believe that B had ever physically seen L, which is another change I have made.
> 
> 4\. One would think killing L would make it very easy for Beyond to step in as L, but in the book, B only killed those that were out of time, which leads me to believe he knew or at least assumed (correctly!) that an individual would not die before their time was up (barring use of a Death Note, which he had no knowledge of). Murder is considered a “natural” cause of death to shinigami, eg Misa the night she was attacked and Gelus intercepted.
> 
> 5\. I know a common interpretation of L's relationship with the Wammy boys is one of being something like an (aloof) older brother/mentor but.... I personally don't feel that way. Finding a successor to L was a goal of Watari's and L, to me, doesn't seem the type to really appreciate the idea of being replaced and would honestly probably even resent it and the Wammy boys on some level. Perhaps this would have changed after LABB, but... I doubt by much. Just my own personal headcanon!


End file.
